It feels like yesterday that the baseball regular season started. We frolicked, hand in hand, through the season. You stopped to pick a flower and I said, “That dandelion looks like a French impressionist painting that you can see up close.” Then we giggled and blew the parachute off its stalk. Today, the parachute lands and I’m sad. The regular season is done. As an action movie sidekick once said right before he was about to be killed, “NOOOO!!!” There’s a cure for the post-baseball season blues — recapping the preseason top twenty lists and being hand fed Doritos. First up, Cool Ranch and our Preseason Top 20 Catchers for 2009. It’s important to look back before we look ahead to 2010. Tell ‘em, B-Real, “How do you know where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve been? Understand where I’m coming from?” The top 20 lists are ranked according to ESPN Player Rater. It may not be wholly accurate, but it’s wholly unbiased. Anyway, here’s the top 20 catchers for 2009 fantasy baseball and how they compared to where I originally ranked them:

1. Joe Mauer – I was reading from The Book of Right-On by Joanna Newsom (<–reference for our two girl readers. Hey, ladies!) about all of Mauer’s numbers, except the homers. For his power, I was dead wrong. If I could have E.G. Marshall come to my defense, he’d say no one predicted more than 15 homers for Mauer. I was still wrong. Dead. Flippin’. Wrong. Preseason Rank #3, 2009 Projections: 95/12/80/.320/3, Final Numbers: 94/28/96/.365/4

2. Pablo Sandoval – He wasn’t ranked in ESPN’s Player Rater at catcher because of eligibility requirements, but I ranked him as a catcher in the preseason, so the Kung Fu Panda gets a bye. In the preseason, I said, “I have his 2009 projections as 60/14/65/.300. I think he can get to 17+ home runs without losing anything on the average side. He’s not as appealing to me as a 3rd baseman or a swimsuit model.” I was half right, he would’ve made a decent 3rd baseman too. I’ll miss Sandoval in the catchers slot next year. Preseason Rank #13, 2009 Projections: 60/14/65/.300, Final Numbers: 79/25/90/.330/5

3. Victor Martinez – I know you’ve abused your body with booze and babes for the last six months, but if you can remember back to the preseason, Martinez was risky coming into 2009 after a fakakta 2008. He put those fears behind him and, with a little help from a trade to Sam Horn Nation, had a productive 2009. Preseason Rank #4, 2009 Projections: 65/18/95/.300, Final Numbers: 88/23/108/.303/1

4. Brian McCann – He’ll probably be my number one catcher again next year. How’s that for being obstinate? How’s that for knowing what obstinate means? Can I get a Roget’s up in this mug? Preseason Rank #1, 2009 Projections: 75/25/95/.295, Final Numbers: 63/21/94/.281/4

5. Kurt Suzuki – At number five, we enter a group of catchers that were probably passed around in your league like blow at an Eric Dane/Rebecca Gayheart clam bake. I think the fact that Suzuki is ranked this high proves the point better than I could ever about not paying for catchers. Also, most of these guys were unranked, because, frankly, they weren’t even drafted. Preseason Unranked, Final Numbers: 74/15/88/.274/8

6. Jorge Posada – I didn’t think he had another productive season in him. Obviously, The Jet Stream thought different. If only Bobby Meacham had a chance to play in that wind tunnel, he could’ve broke double digits for his career. Preseason Rank #12, 2009 Projections: 55/12/65/.270, Final Numbers: 55/22/81/.285/1

7. Miguel Montero – Probably the best waiver wire claim for any catcher this year. In my mind, Montero was more valuable than Suzuki even though he ranks above him. If you agree, then we may share a mind. Weird! Preseason Unranked, Final Numbers: 61/16/59/.294/1

8. A.J. Pierzynski – Jesus Colome, is Pierzynski really this high on the catchers list? What a terrible year for catchers. I’d prefer a bunch of names below A.J. — Napoli, Olivo, Inge and even a Flying Molina Brother. Can we just allow steroids for catchers? C’mon, it wouldn’t be that bad. Put the squatters on equal footing with the rest of the league. Pierzynski is also the number one reason why you don’t draft catchers until the end of your draft. They’re all so similar you could have easily had any number of guys below in the final rounds of your draft or off waivers and you would’ve done just fine. Preseason Rank #20, 2009 Projections: Yuck/Blah/I Feel Sick/.280, Final Numbers: 57/13/49/.300/1

9. Mike Napoli – With the amount of questions I fielded this year about dropping Napoli, you would think he wouldn’t have even made the top 20, let alone the top 10. He’s the number one example why you should Ron Popeil your catcher and, “Set it and Forget It.” Preseason Rank #9, 2009 Projections: 55/23/65/.245/7, Final Numbers: 60/20/56/.272/3

10. Bengie Molina – I would’ve preferred this Flying Molina Brother a lot more than the one below. Actually, I wouldn’t have owned the Yadier version. Preseason Rank #10, 2009 Projections: 50/15/70/.275, Final Numbers: 52/20/80/.265

11. Yadier Molina – Here’s a good example of the poor catcher numbers this year. I ranked Yadier 19th overall with numbers that aren’t that far off from where he ended up, but he ranks 11th here with terrible RBIs and Runs. Preseason Rank #19, 2009 Projections: 35/7/50/.270, Final Numbers: 45/6/54/.293/9

12. Brandon Inge – In the first half of the season, Inge was on a binge. In the 2nd half, Inge was on the fringe. Sandoval knocks on my office window, “Did someone say open fridge?” Preseason Unranked, Final Numbers: 71/27/84/.230/2

13. Miguel Olivo – Two good months gets you 13th on the top 20 catcher rankings. In an interesting aside to me and maybe three other readers, Olivo and John Buck combined for 31 homers and 101 RBIs. Preseason Unranked, Final Numbers: 51/23/65/.249/5

14. Russell Martin – Kinda shows you how awful Martin’s season was with the company he’s keeping on this list. Here’s a juicy nugget I said back in February, “I don’t want to have anything to do with a catcher who gives you value because of some schmohawkian steals. You’d be surprised at how fast a 13/18 catcher can become a 12/7 catcher. You really want to draft Placido Polanco in the fourth round as your catcher?” And that’s me quoting me! Preseason Rank #5, 2009 Projections: 95/15/70/.285/10, Final Numbers: 63/7/53/.250/11

15. John Baker – I have a feeling that Baker might be overrated next year. Not sure why, just a gut call. (<–helpful, but less provocative than a booty call) Baker was decent for stretches of the season, but he still has very little power, no speed and not a great average. Preseason Unranked, Final Numbers: 59/9/50/.271

16. Matt Wieters- In fairness to me, I projected Wieters’s 2009 stats in January way before I had any clue when he’d be called up. He disappointed for most of the year, but his September (13/3/14/.362) gives hope that the hype should indeed be believed. I’m a little giddy to draft him next year, which probably means others are a lot giddy and I won’t get him. Preseason Rank #21, 2009 Projections: 50/17/60/.290 or the minors, Final Numbers: 35/9/43/.288

17. Rod Barajas – An August when he hit 7 homers and batted .225 pushed him onto this list. Yes, that was his good month. Preseason Unranked, Final Numbers: 43/19/71/.226/1

18. Ivan Rodriguez – Man, the catchers are terrible this year. This stunod I wouldn’t have owned in a 20 team league that only used catchers that were traded from the Astros to the Rangers mid-season. Preseason Unranked, Final Numbers: 55/10/47/.249/1

19. Chris Iannetta – Here’s one of the problems with the ESPN Player Rater. Iannetta wasn’t that terrible. Okay, he wasn’t that good either. But his average drags him down a lot. A terrible average on a catcher is bearable because of how few ABs they get. See Miguel Olivo for further illustration of this point. Preseason Rank #7, 2009 Projections: 55/19/70/.265, Final Numbers: 41/16/52/.228

20. Carlos Ruiz – He had 11 April ABs and he made the top 20. Yikes. Guess that’s the perfect way to end a terrible year at the catching position. Ladies and gentlemen, your 20th ranked catcher, Carlos Ruiz. Belch. Preseason Unranked, Final Numbers: Do you care? Final Numbers: Not good, friends.

Hey, I’m not a girl and I still know Joanna Newsom! I was happy with my Posada pick in my full season league, and my relatively late Wieters pick in my midseason league (8th round) also panned out nicely in the end.

But next year I will shift to Grey’s school of not worrying about the catcher position too early.

@ Grey :
what’s with you and doritos ?
out here , it’s seedless black grape season , some of them as big as your thumb !
now , if you can get a french girl to hand feed you some of these beauties , then i’d be impressed !!

seriously though , if this is the year the twinkies begin outdoor play ,
and considering mlb’s penchant for irrational scheduling ,
maybe mauer’s numbers may cool off a bit ,
since you gotta figure the balls might not warm up
until early summer .

i rode sandoval for a while, then packaged him up, snagged up montero for the second half and picked up OLIVIO during hot stints, i believe he had 4 HR’s and 9 ribbys for me in one week?

DO NOT PAY FOR A CATCHER. I took votto and tulo in the 5th and 6th rounds in my 12 teamer, and I wouldn’t have even considered a catcher there…

Mauer prediction 2010: drafted end of the first to early second rounds, plays about 130 games, ticks everyone off who thought he was gonna bat .400 hit 30 HRs and drive in 120 rbis, undervalued again in 2011.

Yeah I should have listened to your advice on drafting catchers. I took doumit around 115-120. (And Hardy not long after that, incidentally) Terrible. I took JD Drew and Derailed Willis one year around those spots too.

Sandoval as my catcher all year definitely helped me get over and win. That was a major key to my championship. Next year will be another crapshoot at C since Sandoval will no longer be eligible at catcher in Yahoo.

@Grey: Montero should be the exact reason why your draft a catcher and leave ‘em should have an amendment about picking up a post hype catcher that finally gets regular playing time midway through a season.

Thanks for the new word: “stunod.” I doubt its etymology bears out my reading (apparently its root means “out of tune”), but I dig the idea that someone stuns you by being so stupid or crazy.

And thanks again for all the help this year. Didn’t win anything, but definitely did better than I should have considering I retained almost no one from rounds 10 on and drafted Reyes in both of my leagues.

Lastly, baseballmonster.com ranks the catchers slightly differently, mostly because it didn’t consider Inge and Sandoval Cs, but here’s another argument for not drafting a C early: Jason Kendall is within their top 20. And Ruiz. But I suppose there’s no better argument than the fact that Pudge is on both lists.

@Grey: Having wasted money on some catchers this year (Soto and R. Martin), I’ve come to realize in addition to not drafting them too high, draft guys with catcher eligibility who don’t actually catch. Sandoval, V. Martinez, and to some extent, Inge are good examples. Their injury risk is less (except for Inge), and they wear down a little less over the year.

I’m of two minds about McCann … I drafted him four years ago in a keeper where we all keep 5, regardless of where they were drafted and with no limit on how many times we can keep them. He’s always a keeper for me, but I’m not going to be able to keep Lind, CQ, or Zobrist if I keep him.

Maybe I’ll just give up on Phillips or Aramis … But it’s hard to burn the equivalent of a top five round pick on the C slot!

Does anybody know what the tiebreaker is in ESPN leagues? I was trailing by one point in the RCL Original Recipe standings going into the one game play-off, and one HR in the HR category, and I just made up that point with HR’s by Kubel and Cabrera. So, I’m in a first place tie with Team Huckleberry, and I don’t know what the tiebreaker is, or if there is a tiebreaker.

one nit to pick with your analysis, Grey re: Ianetta. I’m pretty sure the player rater takes into account the amount of at bats a player gets and thus the amount of influence he has on your team’s avg when giving a player a point rating for his avg.

The pudding: If you sort all players in the rater by avg, Ichiro is first at 5.02 with a .352 avg and Mauer is second at 4.81 even though he has a higher avg at .364. I don’t think you can explain this other than that Ichiro’s avg is given more weight because with more hits behind it, it has more impact on your team’s avg.

Thus I’m thinking it’s gotta be the case that the player rater accounted for Ianetta’s lesser amount of playing time in assigning a score to his avg. Ergo, yeah he really was that bad.

BUT I’m not a fan of playing for avg anyway since I think it’s a bit of a crapshoot to draft for it (some fangraphs article backed me up too, talked about sample sizes and after how many at bats does a player’s rate of homers, strikeouts, walks etc. become predictable… batting avg never quite got very predictable no matter how big a sample you took)

P.S. At least this dude dug the Newsom reference. Looking forward to further revelations of Grey’s music nerd side in the offseason… (“Grab Jackson before the Conor bubble O-berst’s”) ok bad example…

re: Iannetta, the ESPN thing may account for the ABs, but that wasn’t what I meant. I meant, I wouldn’t even look at average for a catcher with 289 ABs like Iannetta had. I wouldn’t let it play into the rankings at all. I’d take the homers, Runs and RBIs and be happy. Sorry if it wasn’t clear. May still not be.

Ichiro has a million at bats at a ridiculously high average, so it actually moves your team up, and is underrated in that suddenly Mark Reynolds, Adam Dunn, or even B.J. Upton don’t hurt you much. I know you hate Ichiro but I win with him all the time.

Hey Grey, thanks for all the help again this year. I finished 3rd in my H2H keeper league after just missing the championship game by the ERA tiebreaker (like .16 or something. Son of a!) Anyway, had I moved on, I would have won easily. I should of having finished with a roster that included Howard, Uggla, Miggy, Hanley, Kemp, Dunn, Votto, Lincecum, Johan(stupid Johan injury), and Vazquez and some sweethearts like Arroyo(who I got early), and dlR. Turns out it’s almost better to have gaps to fill in so you can play hot hands then having guys you feel like you can’t sit (I’m talking to you Dunn!). We have limited moves so I couldn’t always play who you recommended. Anyway, drinks coming your way my man. Looking forward to the offseason posts. I love recaps, almost as much as nightcaps.

@Grey: Long story short, if the game had ended it would’ve been tied. However, it turns out that I’m in first place in batting average by thousandths of a point (which ESPN counts and Yahoo doesn’t), and a couple more outs, and Huckleberry may end up winning anyway. Easy to second guess myself now, but I knew I needed two HR’s, the result of which I’ve got some losers who are getting pinch hit outs in my line-up. We shall see. Very close.

I won this league and no one even posted a message to congraduate my hard earn victory that I need a 12 -2 win on final week of season to finish first so I sent out an email stating that I won the post season play – hint hint

on the message board some dick in this league posted this after getting my email

Congratz on your victory. You are the DK 09 champ, but you are not my champ, since I won my consolation rounds. I don’t know your motivation for the email that you sent me and then hiding your email. What’s that about? But i really have no hard feelings at all. If you want to throw mud at me then go ahead because i don’t care. I just think that it weakens the whole point of victory.

then I posted this

congrads on your 7th place finish – I am proud of you – didn’t think you had it in you
I sent the e-mail out to ALL – to let them know that another fantasy baseball season is over and I will be the team to beat next year – I will be changing my team name to THE CHAMP – you can use CONSOLATION CHAMP if you like

This from Grey, Oct. 24: “Pick up everyone from either the Tigers or the Twins, if it could mean a championship for you. Ryan Raburn? Yes, please!…This makes every starter, except for Sunday’s starters for either team, available.”

So, maybe you got Ryan Raburn’s 2 hits and 2 BB. Or, something from one of the THIRTEEN pitchers that appeared in the game. If you got the WIN from KEPPEL, congrats!

@Grey: Ha! Fortunately my job means that I have access to mobile broadband so it’s never too hard to keep up with my teams. And for that reason (among one or two others!) I’m reluctant to suggest re-scheduling a holiday around fantasy baseball…

After all that, apparently ESPN didn’t count to final day stats after all, didn’t post my two HR’s in the Det/Minn game and declared Team Huckleberry the victor. It did so at 12:14 AM PDT. That’s a fast computer.

@Grey: You might need some Google assistance but we’re at a small place called Mangawhai which is just north of Auckland where I live.
Just for a couple of days at the end of the school holidays.
We’d hoped to be sipping mai tais in Fiji but we’ve just bought a new house so we need to be a little more fiscally (ahem) responsible!

@Grey: Correct. I am talking about the individual league. Glad I got the tie with Doc. Thrilled to share the crown.

@Steve: We have a caregiver for my in-laws who lives in Fiji and goes on and on about how great it is. She’s going back home for the first time in seven years over the Xmas vacation, and can’t wait. I hope you’re having a great trip. Congrats on the new house.

As a Phillies fan at heart, would have never expected Rod Barajas to be on ANY Top 20 list. I know he’s had a decent year. But WOW.

How about a look into the future? If Jesus Flores isn’t the answer at catcher for the Nats, could the Nats 2011 (or late September) starting battery be Stephen Strasburg-to-Derek Norris? MLBFP scouted the up-and-coming Norris today if you’re interested.

saw my buddy , get escorted out of the stadium …. for the 2nd time , around the 5th inning .
we were in a series of concerted moves to up-grade our seats .
i ended up about 10 rows behind 3 base , and was feeling pretty proud of myself , until ,
2 innings later , i look over , and he’s sitting 3 rows behind home-plate .
never really understood how he pulled that off ,
though 3 or 4 beers , on top of that many brownies , never did lend itself to universal understanding …
in retrospect .

how much do you mustachioed fellas understand about the game of baseball ?
ryan , hitting in front of phat albert , with man on 1st , swings at 1st pitch ??
doesn’t he know that he’s going to eventually see a better pitch , deeper in the count ???

plus …. you understand , larussa lost some of his genius , when he left the A ‘s ….. and should be hitting derosa in front of pujols .
cust kayin’

whenever you have a superior player who wins your league , it is customary to congratulate that winner , in hopes of encouraging him to return next year .
otherwise , without him , your league will be weaker .

every individual weekly match-up that i lost this year , and there were only a few , i made sure that i congratulated the guy that beat me .

some of you have never beaten me , not even in one weekly match-up , after many years of playing together .
some of you have beaten me for the 1st time , this year .